1. Technical Field:
The present invention relates generally to an integrated application environment in a network data processing system, and in particular, the present invention is related to a generic framework for integrating components with different interfaces in an enterprise application integration environment.
2. Description of Related Art:
In an integrated application environment, an integration broker integrates different types of applications and shares business objects among these applications. Application components describe their contracts with other components using interfaces and references. An interface specifies what operations a component supports and the input/output details for each operation. A reference specifies the interface with which a component will communicate. The interface may be viewed as an “inbound” contract, and the reference may be viewed as an outbound contract. If the interface reference for one component, component A, does not contain a match for the interface exposed by component B, these applications are not compatible as the components will not be able to communicate with each another.
Consequently, there is a fundamental need for integration brokers to have at least one mechanism that enables, despite disparities in the components' respective interfaces, the various pieces of the integration puzzle to be ‘glued’ together to form an integrated solution/whole. Although existing solutions in the current art do provide mechanisms that allow for integrating incompatible components, these solutions have several drawbacks. Current methods require that developers write custom code when components with different interfaces need to be integrated. Thus, every time a user has two components with dissimilar interfaces needing to be integrated, a programmer must write custom code to be able to integrate these components. This process is not only time consuming and laborious, but it is also expensive from a cost or dollars perspective. In addition, the custom code may contain errors, the effect of which may require additional time and effort to remedy.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to have an improved system and method for integrating components with different interfaces without requiring custom code to be written.